2013 in review
31 December 2013
I was going to write a long in depth look at what all I accomplished in 2013 as well as some of my failings. I got bored of it and deleted it, because if I didn't even want to write it, who would possibly read it?
2013 is the year I transformed from a simple web developer into a software engineer. I really started to understand why process, testing, and maintainability is super important in this field and especially when working with start ups.
I learned more in 2013 than I probably did in the prior 5 years put together. I basically immersed myself in work and learning and trying to get better at everything I did. Turns out, that's not the best thing for your social life, but hopefully will be worth it in the end.
Since so much of what I did in 2013 was as part of a team at work, I use “we” and “us” to describe a lot of my professional accomplishments below, because I couldn't have done it without Jared and Blake.
That learning was fueled by a lot of mistakes and failures in 2013. I won't go in to details here, because I'm not really sure what all I can or should talk about publicly, but those failures allowed us to learn a lot, really fast.
That doesn't mean 2013 didn't have its successes. Among others, the progress Bodeefit has made this year has just been incredible. On January one, it was a mailing list. Now, we have apps on iOS, Android, and Windows 8, and a beautiful responsive website. We are producing revenue and we just launched our Windows 8.1 app which has been really popular (and might be the best fitness app on Windows 8).
One of the biggest accomplishments this year for me, has been taking what we have learned in these successes and failures and turning it into a process that we can use at Think Big that saves us time and allows us to accomplish more. We have plans to start sharing a lot of this stuff publicly in 2014, its just not fully baked yet.
We are looking to grow our team at Think Big in 2014, if you are developer passionate about building beautiful products that provide real value to users, get in touch, I'd love to talk to you.</>
Other than that, my 2013 was pretty mellow.
I started playing sand volleyball in the spring and continued doing so into the summer and fall. I highly recommend it.
The whole Edward Snowden/NSA thing has been a constant concern of mine ever since this summer. It is a problem I am very much interested in solving, I'm just not sure how yet.
I got my weight all the way down to the lowest I've had been since middle school during the summer, since the holidays I've been kind of slacking, but nothing a good new years resolution and some Bodeefit won't fix.
In June my best friend, Jared Johnson, got married and I gave a kick ass best man speech. Congratulations Jared and Elizabeth.
I successfully made it another year without getting married or having a kid - this might have been one of my biggest accomplishments of my year, considering all of my Facebook friends are dropping like flies.
2014 should be fun.